9/01/2015

If You Support the County Clerk in Kentucky, You Support Shariah Law

The Rude Pundit is trying to get his head around the thinking of County Clerk Kim Davis of Rowan County, Kentucky. See, he can't imagine a situation where he's asked to do something lawful for his job, for the people who, you know, pay him, and he doesn't do it. Now, between the asking and the doing, there might be a hell of a rigmarole. For instance, recently at this here professorin' gig, some top-down changes to curriculum were instituted. After a protracted battle, where the Rude Pundit spoke out publicly against things, where he joined protests and signed mighty petitions of many signatures, his side lost.

It didn't even occur to him to declare, "I will not teach because this curriculum violates my deeply-held pedagogical beliefs." No, his options would be to either quit or do his job and live to fight another day. And since, at the end of the current day, no children were being bombed or rivers being polluted, he went to work like usual. Because that's what you do. Because that's the choice you face. If you have a job, you do the job. If you don't want to do the job, leave the job.

But what he can't even begin to comprehend is the conviction that if he does a job that violates his beliefs, an invisible sky wizard will angrily condemn him to an eternity of fire and demon rape. To take that further, it's not in his realm of thinking to understand that one might think that it's one's job to keep the angry sky wizard, fire, and raping demons away from others.

That's exactly where we are with on-her-fourth-marriage Kim Davis and the other county clerks in Kentucky who are refusing to issue any marriage licenses because they don't want to allow same sex couples to marry. The twisted reasoning in not issuing licenses to opposite sex couples is so the clerks don't appear to be prejudiced against gay couples. Ahh, they're subtle, these Christian soldiers.

Davis wasn't so subtle with the all-male and all-female couples who showed up today to get their perfectly legal marriage licenses. Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court said, "Shut the fuck up and do your goddamned job" to Davis. Then a federal court said, "What Kagan said, and start now." Davis remained totally, almost admirably, but definitely dumbly defiant.

When one unlucky groom asked under whose authority she was acting out, Davis proclaimed, "Under God's authority." The next question should have been "Does God sign your motherfucking paycheck?" followed by "No? Then get a job where he does."

Instead, Davis faced down the angry group and announced, "I'm willing to face my consequences and you all will face your consequences when it comes time for judgment." That's adorable, Davis pretending as if she wasn't judging them already. She'll get more time to make her holy case when she appears Thursday before a U.S. district judge for a possible contempt citation and fine (no one's asking her to be put in jail. Let's not make this nutzoid evangelical more of a martyr to the Jesus fellaters bobbing on the bearded knob for her cause).

If you don't get it, let's make it clear: This is an attempt to enact fundamentalist Christianity as law. It is an attempt to make religious doctrine take the place of secular legal decisions. It is, in theory and operation, no different than the Shariah law that cowardly conservatives fear will overtake the nation, with Muslim Obama as chief mullah or some such shit. You can say you prefer your flavor, but it's still motherfuckin' ice cream. (Note: The Rude Pundit really wants some ice cream.)

Oh, we'll have the usual parade of suspects, of craven politicians leaping to Davis's defense, of talk radio dogs woofing away to their anus-sniffing audience. You know, though, the Rude Pundit may not understand the desire to avoid the stink eye of God, but he knows where inspiration for such fuckery comes from.

The Republican Party is made up of fundamentalists of one type or another now. If your only stance on any issue is "My way or not at all," if you're going to threaten to shut down the working of the government because you don't like Planned Parenthood or you need answers on Benghazi or you need to represent for your state's dead president, then why wouldn't someone think it's fine to stop the gears of local government to please their angry gods.